She rolled her shoulders, and then massaged her quads. “I’m thinking probably the first campsite,” she said with a rueful laugh. “I’m sore in places I didn’t know I had.”
“Ohh, just wait till you wake up tomorrow morning. Sleeping on the ground is its own kinda fun.”
“Yippee,” she said dryly, and then swiveled her head at me. “You said you know what you want to some degree. What’s that mean?”
I tucked my hands under my head. “I know I like the way you taste, and I like the way you can’t seem to help screaming. I know you’ve got a wicked talented mouth. I know you’ve got a killer fuckin’ body, and I’d murder someone to get you naked.” I turned to look at her, meeting those wide, expressive, hazel-green eyes. “I also know I’m impressed as fuck that you’re out here, so far outside your comfort zone, and I haven’t heard you genuinely complain about anything yet.”
Her cheeks were pink, and she wouldn’t look at me. “Ram…” she said, and then sighed. “You’re impossible.”
“How am I impossible?”
She shook her head. “I just…I think I know what to expect with you, and then you go and blow that out of the water, and then you go back to being an arrogant fuckboy.”
I laughed. “I’d like to think that makes me more complicated than you’d originally assumed.”
“You’d think right.” She flexed her legs, stretched her torso. “I guess I assumed you were a prototypical country boy jock. All swagger and bravado and testosterone and muscle, and not a lot else.”
“But?”
She laughed. “But you’re quite a lot more than that, I’m discovering.”
I decided to let it go, for now. “Ready to get moving again?”
She nodded, and I stood up, extending a hand down to help her up. When she reached her feet, she paused, standing close to me, staring up at me.
I won’t say sparks flew between us, because that wouldn’t be quite accurate. It was more like the first flickering flames of a runaway campfire licking at the base of a dried out tree—not much at first, but you just knew looking at it that it would grow to be something enormous and white-hot.
I was sorely tempted to kiss her.
Yank her up against me, cup the back of her head, and kiss her stupid.
She saw it, sensed it—before I could kiss her, she gave a minute shake of her head, as if to dispel a momentary burst of insanity…like letting me kiss her. And then, with a strange, soft sigh, she pushed past me, struggled into her pack without help, adjusted and buckled it, and then set off across the bridge without a backward glance.
6
Izzy
My heart was pounding in my chest as if I’d just done a dozen burpees. My hands shook. My core throbbed.
Kissing Ramsey Badd would be a monumentally stupid idea. Just because he could eat my pussy better than any man to put his face between my legs didn’t mean I was ready to suck face with him. Sure, the only thing I could think about—aside from DON’T LET RAMSEY KISS YOU!!—was how magnificent and perfect and glorious and amazing his cock had been…assuming memory held true, that is.
The whole thing had happened really fast, mind you, so my memory was a bit hazy. All I really remember is hauling him into the empty hospital room on a horny whim, thinking I’d never see him again or, if I did, it’d be fine and dandy and no-harm-no-foul. But then I’d shoved him into that stupid little plastic-leather chair, yanked his jeans and drawers off, and had found myself face-to-face with penis perfection. I remember thinking: Holy mother of shit! The man is hung like a goddamn rhinoceros!
That was not much of an exaggeration, either. I’d had some nice dick in my slutty little life, but if all I ever did was suck that man’s cock one time, I could die a happy woman, because it had been just that pretty.
And now…shit—I wanted it. I wanted his cock.
I didn’t want complications and emotions and vulnerability and sensitivity and all that lovey-dovey, sucking face, simpering terms of endearment, ooey-gooey-rich-and-chewy romantic horseshit. I didn’t want to tell him any more of my deep dark nasty secrets. I didn’t want to cuddle him after we made love—I wanted him to fuck me hard and make me come until I went cross-eyed, and then fall asleep like a douchebag. I wanted him to fuck me doggy-style, legs in the air, bent over the bed, face down ass up—dirty nasty filthy sex.
What I didn’t want was face-to-face intimacy, breathing each other’s breath, staring into each other’s eyes, whispering and shaking in the drowsy afterglow. What I didn’t want was to wake up with him and never want to move.
Because people left you.
Mothers died, and fathers changed.
Men used you and abandoned you.
Fucked you and dumped you. Told you you were beautiful, fucked you in a train station, and left you dripping cum in a bathroom, alone, terrified of getting pregnant and diseased, with no money, no friends, and nowhere to go. Men called you a fat whore so you’d feel like shit, like you didn’t deserve anything better than their pathetic ass—and you believed them and took the pathetic scraps they were offering, and then you’d feel even worse afterward and try to eat and drink your way to feeling okay again.
Men were walking, talking dicks: pieces of meat to be used and discarded. They weren’t for liking, or wanting, or needing. You didn’t get attached. You didn’t see their qualities, only their flaws and faults. You sucked their bank accounts as dry as you did their dick, and felt zero remorse—not because you didn’t have your own money, or because you were a sugar-baby, but because it was easier and simpler and better to use them like a coldhearted succubus than to pretend you were capable of something so human as an emotional connection.
Because you weren’t.
The ability to form emotional connections with men had been seared, scarred, and taken from me a long, long time ago.
So no—I wasn’t about to kiss Ramsey Badd. Because he stank of danger. He gave every indication that he was the kind of man who wouldn’t even realize he was using you, and wouldn’t think twice about walking away after he was done—and would leave you half-in-love and imagining a forever after a single fuck.
Nope, nope, nope. Not doing it. Not going there, not with anyone, but certainly not with him.
I stomped across the bridge, knowing full well I nearly gave away my emotional reaction to him nearly kissing me. But once across the bridge, the forest soon closed in again and swallowed the trail. I remembered all too well how suddenly we’d come across the bear, so I forced myself to slow down, letting Ram catch up—I had zero interest in running into a bear with Ramsey fifty feet away.
I kept him a few paces behind, though, because I was still feeling off-kilter and pissy, and if he tried to strike up his usual flirty banter, I’d either snap at him unfairly, or do something even dumber, like maul him.
Gah, my stupid libido was revving at the redline. Him and his stupid mouth, his stupid tongue, stupid lips. Even stupider beard, scratchy and silky at the same time as his face nuzzled between my thighs, licking me to an orgasm that had left me weak in the knees in a way I’d not felt in a very long time.
I did remember that part of our hospital room tryst with crystal clarity: using just his mouth, he’d made me come so hard I literally saw stars behind my closed eyelids. And listen, I’m never exactly quiet when I orgasm, but I don’t typically scream like a horror movie heroine the way Ramsey made me. That’s new, and unusual. And that’s just his mouth. No fingers, no cock, no toys.
Argh. I’m so conflicted. I honestly feel a little desperate to fuck him, just so I can experience at least once how he can make me feel, what he can do to me with plenty of time and privacy at his disposal. But, on the other hand, I’m scared to go there with him because I do feel these tiny fragile little threads of connection to him on an emotional level, and if I were to have sex with him I’m worried those threads would grow and strengthen, and then he’d prove true to his character and abandon me like every man always has—and, in m
y mind, always will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah—Rome hasn’t abandoned Kitty, nor has Rem abandoned Juneau. And none of their cousins—not one of the eight of them—has abandoned their respective significant others. So, I guess I’m fully aware that the data in this case is somewhat stacked against me.
But try telling that to my heart.
It won’t believe you. The numbers, the data—that means nothing to my heart.
“Izzy.” Ram trotted to catch up to me. “Yo, Izzy, hold up.”
I slowed my steps a bit, glancing at him. “Yeah?”
“What’s the rush?”
I shrugged. “No rush.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, well, you’re really pushing the pace, babe. We have all the time in the world.”
I focused on slowing my pace, because he was right. No point exhausting myself. I wasn’t going to be able to get away from him, obviously. I needed him, because I had no clue what I was doing out here, and he did. I’d chosen to accompany him on this stupid hike, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on. Proving something to him? But why should I care? Proving something to myself? I’ve never cared about being outdoorsy, so why start caring now? There’s no good reason to be out here with him, on a three-day hike in the Alaskan wilderness. Sure, this is a well-maintained public trail, fairly well-trafficked, not far from civilization. It’s not like we were way out in the trackless wilderness of the deep bush. But still—this was more wilderness than I’d ever experienced.
Up until now, my idea of wilderness was being out of range of Wi-Fi without my no-sugar-added vanilla, almond milk, quad-shot lattes.
“You know, Izz, I’m noticing a trend, here.”
I glanced at him, faking boredom. “A trend, hmm?”
“Yup.” He reached back, snagged his canteen, unscrewed the cap, took a sip, replaced the cap, and secured it once more. “Whenever things get too real or personal between you and me, you start literally, physically, trying to run away from me.”
“Do not.”
He continued as if I hadn’t denied it. “And then you blame me for being annoying which, I’ll grant you, is probably partly accurate, because you’re fun to annoy. But there’s more to it, I think.”
I wanted to deny it again, but if I denied it too hard, it’d be a case of “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” and he’d see right through that. So, instead, I took a different tactic.
“Why is it fun to annoy me?”
He grinned, rolling a shoulder. “Because your reactions are always so predictably entertaining.”
I glared at him. “I am not predictable.”
He just laughed. “Oh yes, you are.”
I made a face of disbelief. “I am not. Kitty and Juneau were just telling me how unpredictable I am.”
He took his hat off, scrubbed his hand through his hair, and replaced the hat. “I’ll bet you I can make you smack me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, not anymore. You’ve told me the reaction you want, and now I won’t do it.”
He snorted. “You wish. I am absolutely certain I can get you to smack me.”
“Like, a full-on across the face slap?”
“Sure. That, or just an annoyed whack to the chest or arm.” He winked at me. “The trick is, I’m not gonna do it now. It’s gonna be when you’re not expecting it. My point is, I’m getting to know how you’ll react to certain things.”
I huffed and shook my head. “Yeah, right. You wish.”
He bumped me with a shoulder. “You don’t believe me?”
“Nope.”
“Make a bet of it?”
I stuck out my hand. “I’ll take that bet.”
He eyed me sidelong as he shook my hand. “So…what are the stakes? I’ll even let you choose.”
“That’s risky business, letting me pick the stakes.”
We rounded a corner and reached the bottom of the steepest hill yet, and I watched how he leaned forward and took long, deep strides, pushing hard on his back leg to propel himself up the hill, and I mimicked that.
“No money,” he said. “The stakes can be anything except monetary exchange, because that’s boring.”
I nodded. “I wasn’t going to make it money anyway.” I laughed as a ridiculous idea popped into my head. “Okay, I’ve got it.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Uh-oh. You’re laughing. Not a good sign.”
I pointed at him. “Right! Because you have no idea what I’m about to say! Because I’m UNPREDICTABLE!”
He snorted. “I wasn’t saying you’re predictable as a person, or in the things you do and say—just predictable when it comes to getting you to react to something that will annoy you.”
“I still call bullshit on that,” I said. “Therefore, the terms of our bet are these: You claim you can do something to make me involuntarily smack you, and I say you cannot. If you succeed in getting me to involuntarily smack you, I’ll walk one mile with my tits hanging out. But, if you don’t succeed, you have to walk a mile with your dick hanging out.”
He guffawed, halting to bend over laughing, smacking his knee. “Oh man, oh man! Seriously, Izz?” He wiped at his eyes. “You’re serious? Those are your terms?”
I nodded. “Yep. You win, I walk a mile with my tits out. I win, you walk a mile with your johnson swinging.”
He laughed again, shaking his head. “You realize this is a well-trafficked public trail, right? Just because we haven’t encountered anyone yet doesn’t mean we won’t—it’s basically guaranteed we’ll see either other hikers or mountain bikers or both at some point.”
I nodded. “I know. And the rule is no covering.”
“You’re crazy!” he said. “Legit nuts.”
I smirked. “I’m confident I’ll win.”
“And so am I.” He held up a finger. “Hold on, though. We have to narrow the criteria: when I say you’ll smack me, I mean any kind of involuntary strike anywhere to my body.”
“I’ll agree to that,” I said. “But I’m going to rule out any kind of jump-scares.”
He stuck out his hand and we shook again. “Agreed,” he said. “I wasn’t going to jump-scare you anyway.” He scratched his jaw. “Do you jump-scare easily?”
“Nope,” I said, a little too fast. And then I jabbed a finger in his face. “And we just agreed no jump-scares.”
“No, we agreed jump-scares don’t count toward the bet. Not that I wouldn’t jump-scare you at all.”
I glared at him. “You better not, Ramsey. I’m serious. The last person to jump-scare me got a broken nose—so do it at your own risk. But be warned: it won’t be cute or funny or sexy. I’ll deck the shit out of you.”
“Duly noted,” he said wryly.
And so we hiked in silence for a long while. The first hour, I was on high alert, anticipating something in every movement he made. Gradually, I relaxed. Which, I was fully aware, was part of his plan. Once I’d stopped startling at every movement, I focused on trying to figure what it was he thought would make me smack him. God knows he could be annoying enough that just about anything he did was capable of eliciting some kind of a reaction from me. But enough to annoy me that I’d whack him? I couldn’t think of anything that would fit in that category.
Another hour passed, and by this time I was sweating profusely. We’d gone up and down several hills of varying sizes, and the weight of the pack was beginning to drag on me. I wasn’t quite gasping for breath, but I was breathing hard and I knew I had rather unattractive pit stains happening. I kept adjusting my pack, hoping a different tightness or looseness of the straps would make it more comfortable. My core hurt from keeping it balanced—and by core, I mean my actual core muscles, not my…other core. My thighs ached. My calves ached. My shoulders were screaming. My back was in knots.
I was hungry again.
But, god…was it beautiful out here. The sky was clear blue, with only a few wisps and shreds of white cloud here and there; the sun was bright and warm. Birds flitted overhead, chirping and sing
ing. The trees sighed in a constant breeze, the sunlight shining through them to dapple the ground with shade and light. Every once in a while, the forest would clear or we’d ascend a hill, and I’d get a glimpse of a mountain in the distance—and since we were constantly but gradually ascending, I realized the mountain top was getting closer and closer with every mile we hiked.
We reached a break in the trees where the creek cut close to the trail. I leaned against a tree and shot Ram a look. “I need a quick break.”
He nodded without comment, shucking his pack and helping me off with mine.
“Thanks,” I said automatically, as he set my pack on the ground near his.
Only, he didn’t move away. He stayed right there next to me, not quite behind me. Just…looking at me.
I arched an eyebrow at him, laughing uncomfortably. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
He shrugged; I was leaning with my back against a tree, and he was leaning his shoulder against the same tree. “Just…visualizing.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Oh boy. Visualizing what, dare I ask?”
“You.” His voice was low, a quiet rumbling murmur.
“Me, huh?” I cupped my breasts. “Imagining what I’ll look like if I was to lose our little bet?” I laughed. “Keep imagining, in that case, because buddy, that’s all you’re gonna get.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I was visualizing. I’m perfectly content to let that be a pleasant surprise.” He leaned closer, and I stiffened; he was so close I could feel his breath on my ear, feel his voice as much as hear it. “And honestly, visualizing may not be the right word.”
“Fantasizing?” I suggested.
“Nope.” He paused for effect. “Remembering.”
I caught my breath, hating how immediately I was affected by what I knew he was insinuating. I clamped down on the reaction, but it was intense and immediate and visceral—my thighs clenched, my gut tightened, my eyes widened, my nostrils flared, and I felt the dampness of desire flooding through me.
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